ADAM ADLER, a specialist in choral conducting and music education, holds degrees from the Universities of Western Ontario, New Brunswick, and Illinois. In June 2002, he became the first graduate of the PhD program in music education at the University of Toronto. A proponent of the critical genderist perspective in educational gender research, his current research and lecture efforts include male gender issues in choral music education, as well as GLBT and equity issues in schooling. Adam has taught music in schools across southern Ontario and is active as a consultant, clinician, composer and arranger. His compositions and arrangements have been performed across Canada and abroad. In 1999, he founded The Margarita Project, a performance-based collaboration between folk artists and choirs that encourages the choral performance of previously unpublished, unarranged and unperformed folk music. He has served as assistant conductor of The Bel Canto Singers of Fredericton and the University of Toronto Symphony Chorus, and as conductor of the Glenhaven Community Youth Choir and the University of Toronto Hart House Singers. Adam presently serves as the founding conductor of Just Singers Chamber Choir of Toronto, an adult community chamber choir with a mandate for democratic operation, musical growth, and social service. He performs as a soloist and professional chorister throughout the greater Toronto area, and as a founding member of the folk group Whalers Fate.

Hold My Hand and Listen: Nurturing Choral Community as Musicianship

Adam Adler

Abstract

Choral singingis inherently physical and innately personal, one of the most humanly intimate of all musical acts. It requires no mechanical intermediary, but clothes itself directly in our humanity.
Custer, 2001, p. 25.
What does it mean for a choir to sing in tune? A plethora of choral methods, conducting, sight-singing, and ear-training texts provide practical, singing-based strategies for improving choral intonation and gesture-based strategies for improving conducting communication; but apart from aural/vocal and conducting methodology, traditional pedagogy fails to consider the human aspect of the choral singing equation. As a result the solutions presentedwhile in some cases immediately effectivemay actually be only Band-Aid solutions to deeper ensemble problems. If a choir experiences intonation problems, lack of musicality, or ensemble failure, could it be that the singers do not care to sing in tune, musically, or as an ensemble? How can we move singers towards effective ensemble singing in a way that is nurturing, participant-centred, and permanently rooted in their musicianship? Following a consideration of philosophical and practical writings from the fields of choral music and music education, and a reflection on significant choral teaching endeavours and experiences with community and post-secondary ensembles, the author discusses